Are belief and enthusiasm enough to achieve your goals?
At Wolf and Baller, we have long held a feeling that a lot of success can be attributed to strong belief and enthusiasm. This really comes into play once structure and knowledge have been gained or provided. However, without this structure and knowledge, whilst everyone will like you for your effort, your success might not be as prevalent.
So how do we gain the knowledge and understanding that we need as a foundation to build upon? Remember the PPPPP? Preparation prevents piss poor performance. We bet everyone has had it thrown at them, often after failing dismally at a task you really couldn’t be arsed with. Or maybe more recently throwing the same letters at your new protégé when they’ve underperformed. But like it or not PPPPP has always held its roots in good practice.
Now, no one ever really likes preparation, but there’s no doubt it’s an underused attribute of success. Using preparation as your platform, enables you to research, gain knowledge and develop a structure of your task ahead. However, as tasks and goals grow more complex, surely preparation needs to evolve to provide a mental framework of foresight.
Schema
No not that database tech talk, but a construct in psychology and cognitive science. A schema can be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information.
We see this as part of the preparation, to construct a framework, which helps you organise what might happen, could happen, and will happen in advance of the task. This way you can be better prepared for all eventualities.
Now, we’re not saying we can predict any possible future, or indeed master the Jedi mind trick, but as tasks and situations become more common, so do their possible outcomes and intern your ability to control them.
Studies have upheld schemas’ successful use in the business world, e.g. the ability of entrepreneurs to spot new business opportunities more readily, using a decision and schema-based theory.
Visualisation
Visualisation is often used to mentally rehearse an action. Research using brain imagery has shown neurons in our brains, interpret imagery as equivalent to a real-life action.
When we visualise an act, the brain generates an impulse that tells our neurons to "perform" the movement or achieve the desired outcome. In other words, you must imagine yourself doing (or being) the thing that you want to do or be, successfully, with repetition. There are many, actors, actresses, athletes, artists and even CEOs that attribute their success to this highly powerful mind technique.
This was used by David James, later in his career as England goalkeeper (whilst at Portsmouth FC). He could be seen pre-match, imagining possible outcomes. Then, in the heat of the match, his mind could handle the pressure, as his mind had been there before. This led to better decision-making and fewer mistakes.
As a struggling actor, Jim Carey visualised his future success and lucrative career. He wrote himself a cheque for $10M for “acting services rendered”, post-dated for 1995. By 1995, Carey was an established comedy actor and was worth more than $10M per movie. Now, we doubt it was just the constant visual stimulus of a $10M cheque that attained his goal (as otherwise, our £10B version is currently lying to us) but we imagine he used this same cognitive process to visualise the positive outcomes of countless auditions.
Looking back through history, in pretty much any discipline, you can see evidence of positive visualisation being used as a technique to help achieve goals. Often described as visionaries, these people are legends in their own field and were masters of visualisation.
Ferruccio Lamborghini has developed some of the world’s most beautiful cars but started his automobile construction career as a tractor manufacturer. Gianni Versace grew from sewing apprentice to arguably the Wolds most famous designer, even creating his own signature material (Oroton) and redefining men’s suits to accentuate the male form to turn men into sex objects.
There’s one thing having a vision and another to visualise whilst combining it with a good schema construct. Adding the belief and enthusiasm is where YOUR magic comes in.
We set out to produce a top-quality slim fit shirt that could transition you from work to play, that gave you protection from sweat and stains with its unique resilience; And made you look and feel like the value of Jim Carey’s cheque. It remains to be seen if this is our Miura made of “Oroton”, but one thing is for sure you’ll be a sex object waring it.
Wolf and Baller – Distinctively you!